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Data Vis Dispatch
January 14th, 2025

Data Vis Dispatch, January 14: Fire, congestion, and Greenland

The best of last week’s big and small data visualizations

Vivien Serve
Vivien Serve

Welcome back to the 176th edition of the Data Vis Dispatch! Every week, we publish a collection of the best small and large data visualizations we find, especially from news organizations — to celebrate data journalism, data visualization, simple charts, elaborate maps, and their creators.

Newsrooms and other creators of data visualizations are back in full swing after the winter break. Recurring topics this week include fires in California, congestion, and Greenland.

The hottest topic this week, was literally (and sadly) really hot. Multiple major fires burning in and around Los Angeles led the data vis community to produce tons of maps. Here are 3D maps of the burning areas:

Reuters: Mapping the Los Angeles wildfires, January 10
The Wall Street Journal: Los Angeles Wildfires Leave at Least Five Dead as Uncontained Blazes Intensify, January 9
El País: Mapas | Así se extienden los incendios en Los Ángeles [Maps | This is how the fires are spreading in Los Angeles], January 10

Several maps added evacuation zones, firebreaks, and more:

Los Angeles Times: California wildfires map, January 7
Financial Times: The iconic Los Angeles neighbourhoods reduced to ashes, January 10
Zeit Online: Als ob eine Atombombe abgeworfen wurde [Fires in Los Angeles:
As if a nuclear bomb was dropped], January 10
n-tv: So würde das L.A.-Feuer in deutschen Städten aussehen, January 9
Tagesspiegel: „Was stimmt nicht mit ihnen?“: Trump wirft Behörden in Kalifornien beim Brandschutz „Unfähigkeit“ vor [“What’s wrong with them?”: Trump accuses California authorities of “incompetence” in fire protection], January 12
De Tijd: ‘Natuurlijke föhn’ maakt bosbranden in Californië nog verwoestender [Chart title: Five major wildfires near Los Angeles cause massive damage], January 9
The Washington Post: Mapping the L.A. wildfires from Palisades to Eaton and Hurst, January 12

Other maps and satellite images showed the destruction caused by the fires.

The Guardian: Before and after satellite images of California fires show devastation, January 10
The Wall Street Journal: Their Wealth Is in Their Homes. Their Homes Are Now Ash, January 12

The fires also carry severe consequences for insurance companies:

Bloomberg: LA Wildfires Push California Insurance Market to Its Limit, January 10

Further maps portrayed the development of the fires over time:

Tages-Anzeiger: Die Flammen­hölle von Los Angeles [Chart title: The “Palisades Fire” spread rapidly within hours], January 10
Radio Televisión Española: Los incendios que azotan Los Ángeles dejan cinco muertos y más de 100.000 evacuados [Chart title: Fire in Palisades, near Los Angeles, has spread at high speed], January 9
NBC News: Maps: See how large the California wildfires are, January 12

Non-map visualizations drew comparisons to previous years and provided insight into fire fighting:

World Resources Institute: 4 Graphics Explain Los Angeles’ Rare and Devastating January Fires, January 9
Reuters: How California fights fires from the skies, January 10

Back on the maps: we saw explanations for the immense fires. They ranged from wind to drought:

New York Times: Maps: Tracking the Los Angeles Wildfires, January 13
The Wall Street Journal: See How a Fire in the Hills Turned Into a Historic Blaze, January 9
Der Spiegel: So kam das Feuer nach Los Angeles [Chart description: In and around Los Angeles, the soil and vegetation are parched, it has hardly rained at all for months], January 10
The Washington Post: What caused the Palisades blaze? Visual evidence points to a recent fire nearby, January 13

High and dry temperatures support the rapid fires. In fact, we found several visualizations that demonstrate the immense heat Earth faced in 2024:

Folha de S.Paulo: Listras do clima: Veja evolução das mudanças climáticas em linhas de crochê
[Climate Stripes: See the evolution of climate change in crochet lines], January 10
Neue Zürcher Zeitung: 2024 war aussergewöhnlich für das Klima – nicht nur die Erwärmung hat Rekorde gebrochen [Chart title: The global mean temperature has risen sharply since 1975], January 10
Financial Times: World breaches 1.5C global warming target for first time in 2024, January 10

Aside from fires, other consequences of climate change include the faster spread of dengue fever (but don’t worry, we’re weaponizing mosquitoes) and London’s temperature actually getting colder:

Bloomberg: Scientists Turn Mosquitoes Into Tiny Weapons to Fight Disease, January 9
Financial Times: The utterly plausible case that climate change makes London much colder, January 11

Another topic put on maps this week after Donald Trump declared he wants it: Greenland — a not-as-large-as-many-think Arctic island, with huge resource potential and an intriguing geographic location:

El País: Mapas | ¿Por qué Trump quiere comprar Groenlandia? [Maps | Why does Trump want to buy Greenland?], January 13
The Wall Street Journal: What Trump Wants With Greenland, January 8
Der Spiegel: Oh, wie klein ist Grönland [How big is Greenland compared to the USA?], January 9

Speaking of Trump, let’s take a look at his more diverse cabinet. Other political visualizations include Thailand’s provincial budget distribution and South Korea’s constitutional court members:

Bloomberg: Trump’s Second-Term Cabinet Is More Diverse Than His First, January 10
WeVis: แงะงบ อบจ. เมื่องบประมาณจังหวัดไม่ใช่เรื่องไกลตัว [Chart title: Provincial administrative organization expenditure share by expenditure category in each province over 3 years (2022-2024)], January 10
SBS News: 무거워진 헌법재판소의 어깨, 올해가 피크일까? [Chart description: A graph of the terms of the 61 justices appointed to the Constitutional Court of Korea so far. Each line represents the term of office of one justice], January 9

And another map topic: transportation. From congestion in New York (our colleague Rose actually wrote an interesting article about this) to rail networks in Germany:

Bloomberg: ​​London’s Secret Fix for Air Pollution: Making Drivers Pay Up, January 11
The Economist: What New York’s congestion charge could teach the rest of America, January 9
Der Spiegel: Wo die Bahn besonders unpünktlich ist [Where the train is particularly unpunctual], January 10

And other topics on maps: Nuclear weapons, support for populist parties in Germany, housing prices, and Squid game:

The Wall Street Journal: The Bomb Is Back as the Risk of Nuclear War Enters a New Age, January 13
Bloomberg: Germany’s Political Frontlines Shift to Downtrodden Rust Belt, January 11
Maps Mania: The House Price Map, January 8 (Map)
Julian Ross: “2021: Netflix quietly releases Squid Game. Content chief Kim Minyoung places it in category Nr. 783. Their data team predicts it will reach 2M viewers max. The show doesn’t even make it to Netflix’s homepage recommendations. But then something unexpected happens,” January 11 (Tweet)

And another topic on maps … just kidding. Here are two beeswarm plots:

The Press and Journal: A96 accident trends revealed – from weather to what people were doing just before a crash, January 13
The Wall Street Journal: The Super Bowl Dark Horse That’s Powered by a Bunch of College Football Rejects, January 9

It’s still the beginning of 2025. Time to start new projects, as The Economist did with an archive of articles published in 1945, and time to look back to 2024, as Nicholas Rougeux did with a personal medical story:

The Economist: Archive 1945, January 10
C82: Living With Nausea: My Story in Six Charts, January 12

Last but not least, three remarkable visualizations about queueing during wartime, starting salaries in Malayisa, and Internet conditions in African countries:

ТЕКСТИ: “Черги ― це просто пекло” [‘The queues are just hell’, Anatomy of queues in government institutions during the war], January 13
图懂天下 Newsgraphy: How much can I get from the progressive salary policy? You can calculate it here [Chart title: Starting salaries], January 13
Rest of World: Starlink is now cheaper than leading internet provider in some African countries, January 10

What else we found interesting

Axios: How a ransomware attack works, January 10
Colossal: Mantra’s Murals Collect Enormous Butterflies in Building-Size Specimen Cases, January 10
Information is Beautiful: “The side of the Earth we’re not used to seeing The Pacific Ocean covers 32.4% of the planet’s surface (more than all land & ice combined) The ocean’s widest point is 19,800km. The circumference of the Earth’s equator is 40,075km (via reddit https://bit.ly/EarthSide),” January 9 (Tweet)

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Vivien Serve
Vivien Serve
(she/her) is a working student on Datawrapper’s Communications team. She creates the Data Vis Dispatch to keep data visualization enthusiasts up to date on exciting new projects. When she’s not working, she studies interface design, and when she’s not studying, she’s planning a festival stage or soldering light installations. Vivien lives in Potsdam.

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